What Auschwitz Looks Like TODAY?

Photos and video virtual tour

It’s hard to imagine Auschwitz today and what does such place look like after many years without being there.

Auschwitz’s fences

Isn’t it?

But you can get almost full image of this memorable place before visiting it.

After this article you will have a glance of what to expect there.

Take a look at these shattering descriptions, pictures and videos. They will help you decide if you want to visit Auschwitz and take part in Auschwitz Tours.

Come on and see the truth.

How is Auschwitz today? 360° walk trough

Go for your first walk trough Auschwitz.

Quite sad experience, right?

If Auschwitz today looks frightfully, we can only imagine how terrifying it was during World War II.

Despite the passage of time, Auschwitz is still one of the most important historical sites in Poland.

This place is still a living memory of hunger, suffering, torture and death. We can not forget that thousands of innocent people lost their lives there, in unhuman conditions and without any proper reason other than their race or religious beliefs.

That’s why Auschwitz is not another tourist attraction to cross out from the list of places to see.

Auschwitz today

Do you want to see more of it?

That’s great, but remember – visiting Auschwitz should trigger reflections instead of being just entertainment.

Fence of Auschwitz today

Witness enclosed in pictures

Most of them were left by the Nazis. Wthout them the exhibitions presenting Auschwitz today would be much poorer. These hundreds of pictures are now an irrefutable proof of the scale on which Auschwitz operated.

What can we see in them?

The pictures immortalize not only the prisoners’ faces but also the last moments of their lives. You can see them arriving at Auschwitz, how they lived and how their bodies changed after weeks of insufficient nutrition and hard labour.

Halt sign

Be prepared for afflicting view.

The black and white shocking Auschwitz pictures taken while the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz still operated are changing the way we imagine this place today.

But it’s only small piece of what you can see.

Prisoner’s clothing in Auschwitz exhibition

During your tour to this bleak place, you will encounter a lot of faded photos of its former prisoners put on display there. It is also a fact that the overall impression of this UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site is not the most pleasant place on Earth you will ever sightsee.

Entrance to Auschwitz – Arbeit Macht Frei Gate

'Arbeit macht frei' gate is the most important and recognizable symbol of Auschwitz. It was made in the camp’s forge by some selected inmates of the camp back in 1940. The gate was what columns of slave labourers from Auschwitz used to march through on everyday basis.

Gate’s details

Terryfying vision?

Imagine that those marches were often accompanied by the sounds of a camp orchestra, composed of 71 skilled prisoners.

Entrance gate in Auschwitz today

Same blocks then and today

Upon your visit to Auschwitz, you will be let inside some of its blocks. There are some special exhibitions inside them.

One of the blocks

The raw architecture of small-windowed, brick-made blocks surrounded by squares and alleys broad enough to allow for endless roll calls by the Nazi torturers. This indicates to the horrors that were lived through inside camp.

Every barrack is unique.

Block 10. – place of scary experiments

For example block no. 10 is particularly infamous for the criminal medical experiments carried out by dr Carl Clauberg inside.

Block’s 10 entrance

What were the experiments for?

Professor Carl Clauberg was responsible for coming up with the best method of sterilization, one that would ensure infertility in an unlimited number of people in the shortest period of time.

His painful experiments were carried out on more or less 400 Jewish women.

What happened to them?

Many of them died due to complications such as peritonitis, hemorrhages form the reproductive tract, high fever and sepsis.

Block’s window from the inside

But it’s not the end of that sad story…

Those who survived the procedures were deliberately put to death so that the autopsies could be done.

Barracks in a row

Unfortunately Clauberg wasn't the only one

A different kind of experiments was carried out by another medical criminal, SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Mengele. His research concerned twins and people suffering from dwarfism. When various medical examinations were over, the patients were killed with lethal injections of phenol to the heart.

What for?

To perform autopsies and the comparative analysis of their internal organs.

Auschwitz today in summertime

Block 7 and Auschwitz’s Daily Routine

Block 7 is a place where Auschwitz’s prisoners were gathered. This building shows us sets of pictures of Auschwitz detainees, piles of their personal belongings, the camp latrines and baths.

Property taken from prisoners

Prisoners’ schedule

The working day at the camp began at 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning (depending on the season of the year) and lasted until 7 o’clock in the evening. The prisoners had various kinds of labor inside and outside the camp boundaries.

Photos of prisoners as a part of exhibition

The prisoners returning to the camp carried the corpses of those who had died or been killed while working.

And it’s not the end of sad facts about Auschwitz.

Place of many deaths – the Execution Wall

The Execution Wall of Auschwitz is placed between Blocks no. 10 and 11.

Execution wall

This is where the disobedient prisoners of the camp used to be shot.

The executions had their own routine:

If there were women among the condemned, they were led into the courtyard and shot first.

All prisoners had to strip naked and walked to the wall in pairs.

The executioner approached them from behind and shot them in the back of their heads with a small caliber rifle.

The corpses were then loaded onto trucks or carts and delivered to crematoria.

Among the victims of the Death Wall there are mostly Polish political prisoners and members of clandestine organizations.

Execution wall today

You must be wondering:

How many people died this way?

There isn’t much information about the number of victims of shooting as a great majority of the killed was never entered in the camp records.

In special cases death sentences were passed by courts operating inside the barrack adjoined to the courtyard.

Court in one of the blocks

You will often see fresh flowers placed at the site, as well as at many other locations inside the camp where a considerable number of prisoners were killed.

Special offer

The Death Gate of the Auschwitz II

This picture of Auschwitz today shows the entrance to Birkenau, dubbed into 'the Death Gate' by the prisoners.

Why so?

40 to 50 long trains filled with Jews were passing through this gate each day, starting in the middle of May, 1944.

The Dead Gate – close-up

The route led to the third unloading ramp. There were literally not a single prisoner or victim of Auschwitz-Birkenau having been transported inside through this raw and blood chilling construction.

The unloading ramp – place of selections

Auschwit’s ramps – panoramic view

There were three different unloading ramps built in Auschwitz camp.

'Alte Judenrampe' was the one used for the longest period of time (between 1942 and May 1944). The ramp was located between the camps of Auschwitz I and II (Birkenau). After the frequency of transports to Auschwitz intensified, the Nazi operators relocated the ramp and selection process behind the Death Gate.

Carriage for prisoners

What was the selection for?

This was all meant to facilitate the process of classifying the newcomers as capable for work (nearly 20% of all Jews transported to the camp) or sentenced to death inside gas chambers. Prisoners were lined up in two rows:

One row consisted of adult men and older boys.

In the other row stood women and young children.

The decision about the future of the people was based entirely on their appearance. If they looked too young, too old or too sick, they were sent to death.

What happened next?

Personal belongings were confiscated and many prisoners were killed on the spot immdiately to show the rest that their life depends on the whims of their oppressors.

Also doctors, such as previously mentioned professor Carl Clauberg, used to come to the ramp and select the future victims of their experiments.

Carriage on ramp

Abandoned after the war, the ramp started to be overgrown with bushes and slowly got devastated. It was brought to its original state in 2004. Two authentic carriages from the time of war were placed on the tracks to symbolize the bloody history of this site.

The vast space of Auschwitz today

Barracks in Birkenau today

The picture says a lot about how large the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was.

The barbed-wired area was the biggest extermination and concentration camp of entire Europe.

Surface was complemented by high voltage applied to the wire and a lot of watchtowers.

That made the escape from camp nearly impossible.

Auschwitz’s fence

There were approximately 300 barracks and buildings with housing, administrative and infrastructure purposes in total.

Auschwitz today

Barracks with inhuman conditions

None of us can imagine how terrible everyday life in Auschwitz was.

But construction of barracks from the inside moves the imagination.

Interior of a sleeping barrack

Picture above shows a typical interior of a barrack where inmates were forced to live. Prisoners of Auschwitz would share wooden cots with their fellow imprisoned ones, sleep on the floor covered with hay or straw mattresses.

Inhumane conditions?

In theory, the blocks were supposed to hold about 700 prisoners each, in practice though, they housed more than 1200. The rooms were so overcrowded that prisoners could sleep only on their sides, in three rows.

Barracks in a row

The barracks erected in Birkenau were originally designed as horse stables, so they weren’t resistant to freezing temperatures.

Inside of one barrack

The barracks in Birkenau were divided according to their function.

There were:

men’s camps

women’s camps

gypsy families camp

hospital camp for men

quarantine camp for men prisoners

family camp for Jews from Theresienstadt

three transit camps

All were opened and used in various time periods, sometimes one replaced the other.

You have to know:

Family camps were the only possibility for men, women and children to stay together. They were however opened solely for the reasons of propaganda. Prisoners were ordered to write censored correspondence which later was used as a tool to mislead public opinion.

Provisional camp latrines

Holes in concrete block

It’s obvious that living conditions at Birkenau were horrifying.

Intimacy and privacy were the concepts totally denied to its prisoners.

Quarantine section of Auschwitz today is a place where you can see that the latrines were just holes in a concrete block.

Fearful gas chambers

Gas chambers will possibly be the most moving part of your tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Initially there was only one gas chamber in Auschwitz and it was joined to crematory I since 1941.

Gas chamber

Later also farmhouses were adopted to exterminate people.

Zyklon B cans

Construction of it was well planned

it’s dimensions are 17 x 4,5 m

the entrance had the inscription suggesting there was a washing room inside

it had the capacity of 700 to 800 people

A can of Zyklon B with adsorbent granules

Later on, there were 2 additional gas chambers ('red' and 'white' houses) built inside nearby houses left by their Polish owners after the camp had been established.

Afterwards they were replaced by a complex of four gigantic gas chambers and crematories. Each gas chamber could kill up to 2,000 people at once.

.

Gas chamber

As only the door was locked behind the people gathered inside, the operators of Holocaust used to insert Zyklon B gas inside, watching the death of their victims through a glazed door panel.

Did you know, that:

People were requested to undress before they could enter the chambers, To keep the idea of the shower even more realistic?

After the process was finished, designated prisoners took care of the corpses: cut their hair, removed golden teeth and took the jewellery. The loot was later re-used by the camp authorities.

Property taken from victims

Crematories in Auschwitz

Crematories were built in Birkenau between 1942 and 1943.

All crematories could burn 4416 corps a day. It was estimated that 1.6 million peoplea year could be burned there.

Crematorium

During your tour to Auschwitz, you will see the interior of crematorium I within the premises of Auschwitz I. This is where the members of Sonderkommandowere harnessed to dispose of the bodies of Jews murdered inside gas chambers.

Crematorium in Auschwitz today

Crematories II-V were built in the territory of Birkenau a bit later.

They were managed to be destroyed near the end of WWII.

The reason?

Leaving them intact would provide evidence in the hands of the Allies.

The same happened with number of facilities surrounding the extermination-aimed places of the camp.

Destroyed crematorium

Auschwitz today – summary

A visit to Auschwitz today will undeniably make an unforgettable impression on you as it has on millions of previous visitors since the beginning of its operation as a museum. Here you can find first-hand report from one of them:

You can still find all symbols of this unpleasant place, touch them and feel their depressing ambience.

Prepare yourself.

Visiting Auschwitz today is the only way to fully understand Nazi crimes.

Hi! My name is Karolina. I fell in love with Krakow when I moved here a couple of years ago to study. I am glad to work with Discover Cracow and share my passion for this city with our lovely visitors :)